NFIB

Exploring the Legal Limits of Web Links
01/ 17/ 2006
by Reid Goldsborough

If interactivity is the defining characteristic of the Internet, linking is the defining characteristic of the Web. By creating hypertext documents and including links to related information within or outside of sites, Web authors can multiply the information they provide.

Anybody who uses the Web becomes quickly aware of these links. But you may not be aware of the different types of links, and how some can even create legal liability for Web authors of business and personal sites.

The most common external Web link takes you to the opening or home page of another Web site. The authors of those sites usually greatly appreciate sites that link to theirs in this way. Google and other Web search engines use this type of linking to determine which Web sites they list first. Being included among the first page of sites gleaned in a Google search can be crucial to a site’s success.

Some links aren't as appreciated. Some Web sites link not to the home page of another site, but to an image or text within that site, making it seem as if this content is an integral part of the linking site. These are typically referred to as direct or inline links, and the practice of using them is sometimes called bandwidth theft.

Bandwidth is being stolen because the Web site doing this type of linking does it typically without permission and often without crediting the linked site, and it increases the use of the linked site, and possibly its maintenance costs, without providing it with any benefits. Bandwidth theft can also be a copyright violation, resulting in a nasty “cease and desist” letter, and it has been known to prompt Internet service providers and Web hosts to shut down a site caught doing this.

Technical means exist to prevent your content from being inline linked in this way, using code that determines when a link request is coming from another site and automatically supplying different content, such as “Don't direct link” message, when it does. When a Web author discovers that another site has engaged in image theft, a manual method sometimes used is to replace the image with a “shock image” to teach the offending site a lesson.

Another type of link that isn't as clear-cut is called a deep link. Here a Web site doesn't link to the home page of another site, but to one of its internal pages. This practice has generally been considered acceptable since the Web went public in 1991. It benefits surfers because it takes them directly to the relevant content to which the Web author links them.

Some commercial Web sites have objected to this practice, however, and have even sued sites that have done this, most notably Ticketmaster in high-profile cases against its rivals. In other cases, sites have objected to deep linking because they want surfers to enter their site through their ad revenue-generating home page and other internal pages.

As a result, some legal experts recommend that Web authors who want to create a deep link to another site ask permission first, says Jeanne Jennings (www.jeannejennings.com), an online marketing consultant in Washington, D.C., who advises medium to large companies with an Internet presence. A less cumbersome approach is to make sure the site doesn't have a posted policy against deep linking, and that’s what Jennings recommends to clients.

Links on a Web page may appear and work differently, depending on which browser you're using, how you have it configured, and how the author of the page has coded the link.

Words linked to other pages or sites usually appear in a different color, style (like underlined) or font. The color of the link word usually changes after you've clicked on it, indicating that you've already been to the target page or seen the target content. This happens because the link is being temporarily stored in a part of your computer’s memory called a cache.

When you click on a link, normally the new page replaces your current page. But Web authors frequently code some of their links so that clicking on one opens up a new browser window on your screen. Web authors do this, in particular, when linking to external sites.Reid Goldsborough is a syndicated columnist and author of the book Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway. He can be reached at reidgold@netaxs.com.

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